[TUHS] 8th Edition Research Unix on SIMH

[TUHS] 8th Edition Research Unix on SIMH

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Tim Newsham

    > Would be great if someone scripted it up to make it dog-simple.

But if people just have to press a button (basically), they won't learn
anything. I guess I'm not understanding the point of the exercise? To say they
have V6 running? So what? All they did was press a button. If it's to
experience a retro-computing environment, well, a person who's never used one
of these older systems is going to be kind of lost - what are they going to
do, type 'ls -ls' and look at the output? Not very illuminating. (On V6,
without learning 'ed', they can't even type in a small C program, and compile
and run it.) Sorry, I don't mean to be cranky, but I'm not understanding the
point.

	Noel

[TUHS] 8th Edition Research Unix on SIMH

[Grant Taylor]

On 03/28/2017 06:49 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> But if people just have to press a button (basically), they won't learn
> anything. I guess I'm not understanding the point of the exercise? To say they
> have V6 running? So what? All they did was press a button. If it's to
> experience a retro-computing environment, well, a person who's never used one
> of these older systems is going to be kind of lost - what are they going to
> do, type 'ls -ls' and look at the output? Not very illuminating. (On V6,
> without learning 'ed', they can't even type in a small C program, and compile
> and run it.) Sorry, I don't mean to be cranky, but I'm not understanding the
> point.

Conceptually I agree.

However, I've had to teach enough people to know that they need a way to 
boot strap themselves into an environment to start learning.

Thus I find having a streamlined process available to them to be 
beneficial.  Then once they have gotten a taste, presuming they like it, 
they can go back and attempt to do more complicated things.

I do consider what (I believe) Warren put together for the UUCP project 
to be a very good start.  Simple how to style directions that are easy 
to follow that yield a functional system.

Conversely, take a look at what's involved in IPLing a minimal MVS 3.8j 
system in Hercules.  (Ignoring the turn key packages.)



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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[TUHS] 8th Edition Research Unix on SIMH

[Tim Newsham]

There's a lot of fun and learning to be had besides doing an install.
An easy entry point encourags more people to learn the system and
get to the point where they could tackle an install of their own.

The script serves two purposes
1) it sets up a clean system
2) it documents the install process

you could also provide a pre-existing built system for
people to play with (which is also useful).  I personally
prefer the script.


On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 2:49 PM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
wrote:

>     > From: Tim Newsham
>
>     > Would be great if someone scripted it up to make it dog-simple.
>
> But if people just have to press a button (basically), they won't learn
> anything. I guess I'm not understanding the point of the exercise? To say
> they
> have V6 running? So what? All they did was press a button. If it's to
> experience a retro-computing environment, well, a person who's never used
> one
> of these older systems is going to be kind of lost - what are they going to
> do, type 'ls -ls' and look at the output? Not very illuminating. (On V6,
> without learning 'ed', they can't even type in a small C program, and
> compile
> and run it.) Sorry, I don't mean to be cranky, but I'm not understanding
> the
> point.
>
>         Noel
>



-- 
Tim Newsham | www.thenewsh.com/~newsham | @newshtwit | thenewsh.blogspot.com
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[TUHS] 8th Edition Research Unix on SIMH

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Grant Taylor via TUHS <tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
 |On 03/28/2017 06:49 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
 |> But if people just have to press a button (basically), they won't learn
 |> anything. I guess I'm not understanding the point of the exercise? \
 |> To say they
 |> have V6 running? So what? All they did was press a button. If it's to
 |> experience a retro-computing environment, well, a person who's never \
 |> used one
 |> of these older systems is going to be kind of lost - what are they \
 |> going to
 |> do, type 'ls -ls' and look at the output? Not very illuminating. (On V6,
 |> without learning 'ed', they can't even type in a small C program, \
 |> and compile
 |> and run it.) Sorry, I don't mean to be cranky, but I'm not understanding \
 |> the
 |> point.
 |
 |Conceptually I agree.
 |
 |However, I've had to teach enough people to know that they need a way to 
 |boot strap themselves into an environment to start learning.

That reminds me of the only service call i ever made to the RedHat
Service in Germany, likely about 18 years ago, when i asked them
how a system can be bootstrapped, how to overcome that chicken and
egg problem.

 |Thus I find having a streamlined process available to them to be 
 |beneficial.  Then once they have gotten a taste, presuming they like it, 
 |they can go back and attempt to do more complicated things.

There was only silence (but he really was a really good one and it
was a deafening silence).

That is what you are for, we only know about roasted chicken and
fried egg (only meant idiomatic) in real practice.

And thanks all living and all passed for the 8th, 9th and 10th
Edition, now i can complete the complete mail history (already
Mail and mailx in V10!).

--steffen

[TUHS] Release of 8th, 9th and 10th Editions Unix (was: Re: 8th Edition Research Unix on SIMH)

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

i wrote:
 |And thanks all living and all passed for the 8th, 9th and 10th
 |Edition, now i can complete the complete mail history (already
 |Mail and mailx in V10!).

The V9 ball does not show any trace of Mail/mailx?, however.
I would be tremendously thrilled if i could get my hands on a copy
of V9 code of the mentioned, may it be today or in the future.

Thank you so much!

--steffen